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Monday, August 13, 2018

BLACK PANTHER (2018)

For all the hype, buzz, critical & commercial huzzahs, the latest addition to the MARVEL SuperHero Variety Pac is perplexingly poor. On the technical side, direction & editing of conventional scenes and action set pieces (with or without heavy CGI add-ons) feels rushed, choppy, generally out of sorts. (Too much post-production second guessing?) And those astro-ships really do look like something from an ‘80s tv space opera. And while the first act of the story turns out to be something of a dodge, after much needless globe-trotting & dispensable character intros, it all boils down to a pair of newly introduced cousins (one upstanding/one evil) vying for the throne to a secret hidden ultra-advanced African nation.* Good King: noble/boring; Bad King: hip-hop/baddass. (Go Team Baddass!) Over-stuffed and over-produced (how many art designers did it take?), the film is an easy write-off. So easy, you may doubt your reaction. Did the Afro-Centric Zeitgeist pass me by? Perhaps . . . perhaps not. A quick peek @ IMDb finds most of the Comments truly brutal. Perplexing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *The same secret/unknown world trope worked better for WONDER WOMAN/’17 .

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